An army has a personality.  Beneath the individual thoughts and emotions of its component parts it thinks and feels as a unit.  And in this large, inclusive sense of things lies a wiser wisdom than the mere sum of all that it knows.  On that dismal morning this great brute force, groping at the bottom of a white ocean of fog among trees that seemed as sea weeds, had a dumb consciousness that all was not well; that a day’s manoeuvring had resulted in a faulty disposition of its parts, a blind diffusion of its strength.  The men felt insecure and talked among themselves of such tactical errors as with their meager military vocabulary they were able to name.  Field and line officers gathered in groups and spoke more learnedly of what they apprehended with no greater clearness.  Commanders of brigades and divisions looked anxiously to their connections on the right and on the left, sent staff officers on errands of inquiry and pushed skirmish lines silently and cautiously forward into the dubious region between the known and the unknown.  At some points on the line the troops, apparently of their own volition, constructed such defenses as they could without the silent spade and the noisy ax.

One of these points was held by Captain Ransome’s battery of six guns.  Provided always with intrenching tools, his men had labored with diligence during the night, and now his guns thrust their black muzzles through the embrasures of a really formidable earthwork.  It crowned a slight acclivity devoid of undergrowth and providing an unobstructed fire that would sweep the ground for an unknown distance in front.  The position could hardly have been better chosen.  It had this peculiarity, which Captain Ransome, who was greatly addicted to the use of the compass, had not failed to observe:  it faced northward, whereas he knew that the general line of the army must face eastward.  In fact, that part of the line was “refused”—­that is to say, bent backward, away from the enemy.  This implied that Captain Ransome’s battery was somewhere near the left flank of the army; for an army in line of battle retires its flanks if the nature of the ground will permit, they being its vulnerable points.  Actually, Captain Ransome appeared to hold the extreme left of the line, no troops being visible in that direction beyond his own.  Immediately in rear of his guns occurred that conversation between him and his brigade commander, the concluding and more picturesque part of which is reported above.

III

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